Murder by Illusion

by Giles Ekins

  ‘You know that time, that time I went to Harrogate for that conference, you remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied through a mouthful of pie crust. ‘I’m never likely to forget that time, now am I, going to bed with Charlie and then afterwards invoking the Devil?’ her stomach beginning to twist ‘he met someone else there and now he’s leaving me.’

  ‘Well, I got talking to Jessica, Jessica Wainwright the CEO of Standard and York Insurance, they are one of the largest insurance groups in the country, ranked number two after Aviva, as you probably know, they are up this year from number six according to Kluwers Guide.’ ’Frankly no, following the league tables of insurance companies is not exactly my cup of tea and what is this ‘Jessica’ all about?

  ‘Anyway we chatted a bit about this and that, she said how much she had enjoyed my presentation on liability insurance.’

  ‘And a real bundle of laughs, that must have been, I bet it brought the house down. Get on with it, whatever it is you’ve got to say to me’ Doreen’s stomach twisting up even tighter.’

  We danced around a bit,’ and what precisely did that entail? and the long and short of it…’ the short of it, for God’s sake,’ she sort of hinted that there might be a job with them, nothing definite, just an insinuation here, a hint there, asking how much did I like working for the London and South West Group, that sort of thing. I thought nothing of it at the time, well you don’t do you, just the sort of thing people say at conferences, isn’t it?’ how the hell would I know? I don’t move in such exalted circles with the likes of your Jessica, do I?

  ‘Anyway, I got a call on Friday and she’s offered me a job…’ ‘She’s offered you a job not they’ve offered you a job!’ ‘Vice President at their liability department in their head office in York, good money, more than I get now, well not that much more but the cost of living, housing etc., is much cheaper in York than London and there would be an executive company car, probably a Jag or beamer, not like this ratty Mondeo I’ve got now, there’s a great company pension scheme and health insurance.’

  ‘You got a call on Friday about a new job and its Monday before you can be bothered to get round to telling me about it? Doreen said icily.

  ‘I was going to tell you on Saturday when we went out to dinner, but I drank a bit too much, wasn’t totally coherent and yesterday you were all arsey after seeing Charlie on telly.’

  ‘I was all arsey? You were the bear with the sore head.’

  ‘Whatever, I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? Jessica has invited me up to York next weekend to discuss things further, look around the city, see what the house prices are like.’

  ‘Jessica has invited you? Not us? And just what does that mean, she invited you? You’re going house hunting with Jessica, is that what you’re saying?’ she snapped angrily, spitting out the word Jessica like a curse, certain he was going to say that he was leaving her for this Jessica. ‘Had he been seeing the bitch on the side? When he had been travelling to see ‘clients’ had he in fact been seeing her, this Jessica?

  ‘No. No, course not, but she could see from the look on his face that taking her along had not been part of his scheme. ‘It’s just that initially, a quick look around and then, then, if I, if we, decide I should take the job, then we’ll go house hunting. And I would really, really, like us to do that, Dor.’

  Doreen was not modified, her anger approaching boiling point ‘Are you having an affair with this Jessica, have you been fucking her?’ the use of the word ‘fucking’ indicative of her ire as she conveniently ignored her own indiscretion a few months earlier –‘you can’t call it adultery if you are still married to the bastard, can you?

  ‘An affair with Jessica? Don’t be absurd, I only met her that once at the conference.’

  ‘So what’s she like then? Jessica?’ and if you say she looks like Snow White I’ll throttle you with that stupid company tie.

  ‘Oh, I’d say in her mid-sixties, quite plain, a bit dowdy to be honest, not at all what you would expect from the CEO of a major concern like Standard and York.’

  Which means early fifties maximum and that she’s attractive.

  ‘Well, I’ll get to meet her anyway, won’t I and I can see for myself?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course, well maybe she’s not in her mid-sixties, a bit younger maybe.’ Yeah, just maybe.’

  Doreen decided to leave it at that, to take it any further could develop into a blazing row and things might get said which would be regretted later. ‘About this job, you think you want it?

  ‘I think so, I’m going nowhere with London and South West, maybe sideways or even backwards, Danny Purchase, he joined after me and he’s been made up, the pompous little prick. London and South West, they’re sort of in the doldrums, stuck in a rut, but Standard and York, they are going places, exploring new markets and opportunities, so yes definitely, the potential is great. And I’d like for us to get our own home, this, this apartment, well it’s not mine, not ours, it’s Charlie’s and I want us to break away from that. I really do, I’d like you to divorce him so we can marry, live properly as man and wife. A new start Doreen, in our own home.’

  And Doreen thought it might be a good idea to move away as well, a fresh start, to a new town and maybe banish those feelings of un-fulfillment, of restlessness, and unease. And , of course, just in case Charlie, the bastard, decided to come calling again – even if it isn’t adultery, not that such pedantic logic would wash with Father McIntyre in the unlikely event that she ever went to confession again…

  Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

  And what was the nature of this sin, my child?

  I slept with my husband, Father.

  A sharp intake of breath. And did you obtain satisfaction from this intercourse?

  Oh yes, Father, I came like a train.

  Tsk, tsk, tsk, sexual intercourse is intended solely for the purpose of procreation, not for enjoyment. That is a mortal sin, my child, say fifty Hail Mary’s and that’s three penalty points on your Marriage licence.

  ‘Shit, I’m beginning to sound like Charlie.

  TWENTY-SIX

  SOUTHEND ON SEA – ESSEX, MAY

  ‘See? It says ‘Attack Dogs,’ not Charlie fucking Chan. The ‘Dogs’ are a great band, worked with them before, they really get the crowd going but the first I hear of it is, what ten days ago when I get a call saying the ‘Dogs’ are pulling out and I got this magician instead. Now ,y’all, what the fuck is that all about?’

  ‘I JUST LOVE THE CHICKS, MAN, just love them,’ Billy Boy Boston said, taking a swig from his bottle of Jack Daniel’s (my best friend Jack, he called it) and passing it across to Charlie.’ They been my delight and they been my downfall.’

  ‘Aye, I know the feeling, been there, done that.’

  ‘Several times over, no doubt.’

  ‘Aye, a glutton for punishment, that’s me,’ Charlie agreed, passing the bottle back.

  They were sitting in Billy Boy’s room at the Premier Inn in Southend-on-Sea in Essex, the first venue of their ‘nationwide’ tour. They had arrived in the tour bus late that evening and were booked to play the following two nights at the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend before moving on to the Victoria Theatre in Halifax, ,the Kings Lynn Corn Exchange, the City Hall, Salisbury, the Embassy Theatre in Skegness and then the other twelve venues of the tour.

  Billy Boy, a languid 6’ 2” Texan leaned back in his chair, tooled leather cowboy booted feet up on the desk, he wore torn jeans, a T shirt with the legend; ’Bollocks to the Empire’ which depicted Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in a light sabre duel and wore his long blonde (obviously dyed) hair tied back into a pony tail. On most men over the age of fifty, his outfit, especially the ponytail would look ridiculous but Billy Boy Boston carried it off. Just about. Not that he gave a shit anyway.

  Once they had booked into the hotel, Billy Boy had asked Charlie to join him for a drink, ‘a getting to
know you drink’ and they had hit it off from the start. Billy Boy had opened the bottle of bourbon, took a deep drink and passed it over to Charlie, who had enough nous not to wipe the top of the bottle before also taking a drink, sensing that the big Texan would be offended.

  ‘Good’ Billy Boy said, ‘only pussy’s drink from a glass.’ and now, an hour later, the bottle of Jack Daniels was well diminished and Charlie and Billy Boy were the best of friends.

  Billy Boy was now telling Charlie how he had once been a child actor in ‘Springvale Heights’ a daytime American soap, popular for six seasons some forty years or so ago, ‘Man, what a piece of shit that was, so fuckin’ maudlin. Every other week somebody had to die, or catch cancer, or fall into an irreversible coma, the long lost brother comes home from ‘Nam ‘cept he’s blind or limbless or some fuckin’ thing. Here,’ passing his best friend Jack across to Charlie again. ‘Reckon I lasted just ‘bout long as anybody on that show, oh I had all sorts of shit happen to me, let’s see’ counting the episodes off on his fingers, ‘I got snake bit, got lost in a blizzard and had to be saved by this old Indian medicine man, then I got pneumonia, thought I was bound to die that time, but no, a miraculous recovery pulled me back from death’s door, wish they had let me die so I could get out of the fuckin’ show but no, they kept me alive so I could get badly injured in a car crash, would I ever walk again? that type of shit, fell down a cliff, got my neck broken in a football game, real football not your soccer thing, finally they let me die, they’d run out of ideas what to do with me so I had a heart attack, apparently I had had a weak heart all along, just waiting to explode and thankfully it did.’

  They shared a joint, that was cool and now Billy Boy, loose and relaxed, mellow with bourbon told Charlie how he had got into singing ‘Quite by accident, man, you know? I had no intentions or inclinations that way at all. No fucking idea what I was going to do, but singing surely was not on the list. Hey, you gonna drink that thing?’ pointing at the bottle of JD. ‘You’re clutching it so tight I thought maybe you want to marry it?’

  ‘Why aye, I’ve fallen in love with it, nay doubt about that,’ Charlie answered, taking a drink, kissing the bottle and passing it back.’

  ‘You know David Cassidy? Billy Boy continued, looking at himself in the mirror again, running his hands through his ponytail, something he did frequently, Charlie noticed.

  ‘Sure, I know the name anyhow, never met the man to speak to, like.’

  ‘Great, great guy, one of the best.’

  ‘He was big, weren’t he? Back in the seventies?’

  ‘Big? He was fucking huge man. Huge. He could fill an 80,000 seat stadium within one hour of the tickets going on sale, but I knew him before all that. You see Charlie, ‘Springvale Heights’ and ’The Partridge Family,’ remember that? David was the star, along with his stepmother Shirley Jones, now he was making stacks of records with the Partridge Family before ever going solo. Well, ‘Springvale Heights’ and ’The Partridge Family’ were recorded in the same studios in LA.’ Billy Boy took another drink and finished the JD, tossing the empty bottle into the waste bin, ‘Another brave warrior fallen in the line of duty,’ and he threw an ironic salute towards the fallen hero, opened up a supermarket carrier bag and pulled out another bottle of JD. Judging by the clink of glass on glass, it was not the only one. Billy Boy cracked open the black clad square bottle, took a long drink and passed the bottle over. ‘Need a piss’ he said and went off to the bathroom and Charlie could hear a long, seemingly endless stream of urine.

  This looks like being a serious session, thinks Charlie, suspecting that Billy Boy was assessing him, they were spending the next few weeks in close proximity and Billy Boy wanted to test his mettle and this was the first opportunity they had had to get together. ‘Bring it on, Billy Boy, bring it on, I’ve drunk with the best and I don’t take prisoners.’

  ‘Anyway, one day between takes’ Billy Boy said as he sat down again and elegantly eased his feet back onto the desk top, looked at himself in the mirror again, caressed his ponytail and resumed his tale. ‘I was in the studio restaurant, minding my own, you know, trying to finish this fucking poem I’m writing.’ Charlie raised an eyebrow in query; since Billy Boy Boston did not look or act like a poet. ‘Yeah, I used to write poetry, useless shit in the main, squirmy love sick verse ‘cos I’d fallen big time puppy love for Mary- Jane Brewster, this blond bitch who played a cheerleader in Springvale, of course she blanked me dead, had her sights set on the big boys and she was going to fuck her way to the top if she had to with her Momma pushing her into any and every bed she could if she thought it might further Mary-Jane’s career, but, no, no way, not into my bed anyhow…Hey, why am I telling you all this? I don’t fucking know you from diddley-shit,’ Billy Boy, said, suddenly all aggressive. Or was this another test?

  ‘Cos me and you and your best friend Jack are getting to know each other, we got some hard miles to go, you seen the fucking tour itinerary, shit we’re bouncing back and forth across the country like tennis balls.’

  Charlie was right, whoever put the tour itinerary together seemed to have no concept of British geography or travel distances, they would be criss-crossing the country from venue to venue in a seemingly haphazard manner, as though the tour manager had simply closed his eyes and stuck a pin in a map of England.

  OK, first off Southend in Essex then up to Halifax in Yorkshire, across to Kings Lynn in East Anglia, over to Barrow in Furness in the north west of England, next Milton Keynes just north of London, then Llandudno in North Wales, back south again to Folkstone on the Kent coast, then up to Buxton in Derbyshire and then across the Pennines to the north west again and the Blackburn King Georges Hall. After that it was back across the Pennines to once again to Hull, down to Stoke in the Midlands, back up to Yorkshire again and the Seville Theatre in Whitburn on Sea. Whitburn for fuck’s sake! Charlie had exclaimed on reading the itinerary, Guilford in Surrey, then back up to Yorkshire yet again and the Harrogate Royal Hall, Harrogate? Fucking Horrorgate, more like, Charlie swore, recalling the last time he had played there, went down like a stripper-gram at the Pope’s birthday party. You know, lots of deathly silence, as he had told Doreen. And then finally the Brighton Theatre Royal, Sixteen more venues on the bill after this one as a warm up act for Billy Boy Boston, a lot of hard miles and then it’s Las Vegas, here I come, ready or not. ‘Viva Las Vegas’ as Elvis had once so elegantly put it.

  ‘Shee-it, man, you’re right, fucking A, pass my friend back here my friend.’ and Billy Boy t took another deep drink. ‘Now, where the fuck was I?’

  Charlie was beginning to realise that Billy Boy, as well as being a serious drinker, was also a serious talker, what my old Granny Ada. God bless her, would call a blatherskite and what I call a gobshite, talking mostly it seemed, about himself and that it was an audience he wanted rather than a drinking companion. Not that Charlie minded so long as the Jack Daniel’s kept on flowing. He had nothing else to do anyway except go back to his own room and drink, so why not drink Billy Boy’s bourbon instead?

  ‘Your poem and Mary-Jane what’s her name, fucking her way to the top. She ever make it?’

  ‘Nah, after Springvale she went nowhere ‘cept Nowheresville. Ended up doing porno, died from Aids a few years back. Shee-it she was pretty, though. Real pretty. My first big crush, you know, me, a fifteen year old kid with a hard on for a High School cheerleader, shit, just how slushy is that?’

  ‘Summer Raines, that was my first big thing, can’t really remember much about her now, ‘cept she only had one arm and she let me touch her boobs.’

  ‘And you’ve been hooked ever since, right?’

  ‘Right’

  ‘Goddam right,’ Billy Boy said, passing back the bottle, a slight slurring to his speech as he closed his eyes and slumped further down into his chair, his feet sliding off the top of the desk, jerking him upright. ‘Shit.’

  ‘You want to call it a night, Billy, carry on tomorrow?’

&nbs
p; ‘Fuck no, you ain’t going pussy on me, now are you, Charlie?’

  ‘No way, carry on. Your poem?’

  ‘Yeah, that fucking poem, ‘Bring my heart back home to me’ I’m there, figuring the fucker out when Cassidy comes over, we’ve been around each other, you know, hi how you doing? that sort of shit and I am writing this poem, and not realising it I’m humming this tune. Hey man, what’s that tune, what tune, that tune you’re humming, and then I realise, I’d turned this fucking dog-shit poem into a song. Cassidy lifts up my notebook, reads the words, sing it he says, shit no, I’m no singer, I say. Give it a go, if I like it, I might record it. Shit, David Cassidy might take my song, which ain’t a song, it’s a poem so’s I can dazzle Mary-Lou Brewster and get into her sweet lace panties like every other fucker on set. So feeling like a dork, I sing, me, Billy Boy Boston from Butt-Fuck East Texas singing for David Cassidy.’

  And Billy Boy sings, softly, singing to himself, wistfully, maybe still yearning for Mary-Lou Brewster and her sweet lace panties.

  ‘Bring my heart back home to me

  Bring it all the way back and free

  My aching heart.

  Oh, baby, baby I miss you so

  Oh baby, baby why did you have to go

  And steal my heart away?

  Bring my heart. Bring my heart,

  Bring my heart back home to me

  And end this everlasting misery.’

  ‘Like I said, a piece of adolescent shit,’ Billy Boy says, a bit sheepishly.

  ‘Why man, it’s good, it’s a bit poignant like, everybody remembers that, what you call it, that teenage angst.’ You’re right; it is a piece of adolescent shit! ‘So, what did Cassidy say, then?’

  ‘Say, he don’t say a word about the song, just takes my arm, says come with me, and the next thing I’m in a studio recording it for Wes Farrell, Cassidy’s producer’

  ‘And it was a big hit and you’ve never looked back since, right?’